Veterans of D-Day, Vietnam and the Gulf War.

By Jeff Werner, BucksLocalNews.com


Dan Lawler dreamed of traveling to Europe and becoming a portrait artist. But history had other plans for the 26-year-old from St. Paul, Minn., who now lives at Chandler Hall, Newtown.

In 1942, while studying under famed portrait artist Paul Trebilcock, Lawler was drafted into the army and began training as an infantryman, even as Hitler and his Nazi Party were on the march through Europe.

While completing his basic training at Camp Barclay in Texas, the graduate of the Minneapolis School of Art put his artistic talent to work, creating a mural inside one of the camp’s several battalion chapels. A photograph of his art and a short story appeared in the camp’s newspaper.

From Camp Barclay, he was sent to Louisiana to study military maneuvers. While there, he received a two month furlough to return home to St. Paul, where he married his high school sweetheart, Jeanne.

In April 1944, he boarded a troop ship in New York bound for Europe. Two months later, on D-Day (June 6, 1944), he joined 160,000 men as part of the largest invasion force the world had ever seen.

With shells exploding everywhere and bullets whizzing past their heads, Lawler and his outfit stormed the shores at Utah Beach, the westernmost of the five landing beaches, located between Pouppeville and the village of La Madeleine.

Lawler and his commanding officer were in one of the boats which landed about 100 yards out. “When we got out, the Major went down in the water over his head. He was only about five feet tall. So I held him up all the way in,” said Lawler.

The beach, he said, was covered in artillery and machine gun fire. “A few didn’t make it,” he said.
After the landing, Lawler was sent ahead as part of a reconnaissance team tasked with making sure the road up ahead was safe for the troops as the Americans pushed toward Paris.

“It was scary,” he said. “We’d come down the roads with hedges on both sides and they’d be hiding behind them.”

On Aug. 17, while patrolling on a road near Alencon, he was hit by machine-gun fire and taken prisoner by the Germans.

According to a newspaper account, “Lawler and nine others were captured when the rear German guard, perched on a hill above the Americans, began spraying them with machine-gun fire. One bullet caught Lawler in the leg, shattering his femur; others downed three more of the men. Before the entire platoon could escape, Germans closed in on the remainder from the woods lining both sides of the road, outnumbered and captured them.”

He spent the next several months as a prisoner of the Germans and with an untreated, broken leg that had him in constant pain. “They treated us okay – no abuse or anything,” he said of his captors. “Of course, they were losing at the time.”

He won his freedom when the allied troops marched into Belgium and liberated the town and hospital where he was a patient. “They (the Germans) just left us,” said Lawler. “They were busy trying to save their own hides.”

After the liberation, he and other patients were showered with flowers and kisses by grateful residents. One Belgian asked Lawler as he prepared to leave for England, “Why go away from us? Here you are king. There you will just be a patient.”

He was evacuated to England by way of France, where his leg was set in a Paris hospital. He returned to the States in Dec. of 1944 where he was admitted to Winter General Hospital.

“As bad as the war was, he was lucky to have gotten out when he did,” said his son, Tom, who lives in Newtown. “His 90th Division went on to fight through Europe, including the Battle of the Bulge. There were many, many more opportunities to be in harm’s way.”

Tom said as a kid growing up in New York City and then Long Island, he remembers his father showing his battle scar, but never really understanding the role he played in the war.

“We knew he had been involved in the war, but my parents never talked about it,” said Tom. “He, like many others in the Greatest Generation, did his duty and then went on with his life,” said Tom.

Looking back, the elder Lawler said he doesn’t often think about that time of his life, but he’s glad he was part of the invasion “because it was absolutely necessary to get the Germans out. You wouldn’t want someone like Hitler taking care of you.”

“It’s pretty cool that he was a tremendous part of history,” said Tom. “We respect the fact that they were this generation that had to do what they did but did it with such grace and not really asking for anything in return. It was just something they needed to do.”

Tom followed in his father’s footsteps, joining the U.S. Air Force as a pilot and becoming a veteran in his own right, flying a C-141 into Da Nang, Saigon and Thailand during the Vietnam War and missions to Saudi Arabia during the first Gulf War in 1990-91.

“The big difference was my service was voluntary. I went in because I needed to learn to fly,” said Tom. “Guys like my father, as patriotic as they were, had no choice in the matter. They did it with the best of intentions, but none of them really wanted to be there.

“For me it was a means to an end and it was a good life for me,” said Tom. “I wanted to learn to fly and about the only way to do that was to go into the military.”

He attended Officer Training School in 1970 and pilot training from 1970 to 1971 before learning to fly the C-141. He began active duty at McGuire Air Force Base, earning the title of 1st Lieutenant at age 23.

He remained at MaGuire for 20 years, working as a pilot and flying C-141s all over the world. He retired as a Lt. Colonel from active duty in 1976 and the reserves in 1992. He now works as a commercial airline pilot for Delta.

Following the war, Dan and his wife, Jeanne, settled in New York City and Long Island, N.Y., and raised four children.

While he never realized his dream of becoming a portrait artist, he did put his artistic talents to use as an illustrator for Parents magazine in New York City. He also did covers for Humpty Dumpty magazine and completed numerous projects for Time magazine and Reader’s Digest.